Range Rover Evoque Review & Prices

If you want a small, posh SUV that will help you keep up with the Joneses outside the school gates while also keeping up with farmers ploughing muddy fields, the Range Rover Evoque is well worthy of consideration. It’s an alternative to the likes of the Audi Q3, Volvo XC40 and BMW X2.

It might be a posh family car, but it’s still blessed with all the off-roading tech and know-how you get in more rugged Land Rovers. Depending on how you look at it, it’s a bit like buying some chunky walking boots made by Gucci, or perhaps some stylish sneakers from Patagonia.

The Evoque certainly doesn’t look any more rough and ready than its alternatives. Instead you get slim, sleek headlights up front and a narrow grille, with a roofline that tapers down to the rear. It’s a good-looking thing.

But while the outside is decidedly handsome, an update in 2023 has taken the shine off the interior. While there used to be a smart twin-screen setup with embedded dials to easily change the temperature, the new-look interior replaces this with a minimalist look. The result is a big slab of plastic between the passengers with a lonely gear selector plonked in the middle.

You now get a big single screen on the dashboard, which is sharp and very quick to respond to your inputs. Navigating through menus isn’t particularly intuitive, though, and changing the climate settings through the screen is awkward on the move.

At least storage is plentiful up front, and there’s loads of adjustability to help you find a good driving position. The narrow windscreen means the view out the front takes some getting used to, but all around visibility is actually pretty good.

Rear seat passengers have plenty of space too, even if they’re tall, and there are some useful cubby holes for storing bits and bobs. It’s easy to get a child seat in even though the door aperture is quite small, and you get a bigger boot than you’ll find in similar cars.

The Range Rover Evoque comes with a choice of diesel, petrol and plug-in hybrid engines, with the latter being the best option if you mostly drive about town or want the company car tax benefits. Long distance drivers should consider the diesel, but none of the non-plug-in engines are particularly economical.

Out on the road, whichever engine you go for, the Evoque is generally a comfortable companion, but it does have a tendency to fidget and jiggle over rough surfaces at lower speeds. Considering its off-road readiness, this is a posh SUV that’s also surprisingly fun and capable in corners.

It’s off the beaten track where the Range Rover Evoque excels compared with alternatives, though. It has four-wheel drive (on all but the entry level engine and trim) and loads of clever technology to make sure you don’t get stuck in the mud. It’ll take you further from civilisation than an Audi Q3 or Volvo XC40, that’s for sure.

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The Range Rover Evoque starts around the £40,000 mark, which makes it a good £5,000 more than entry-level versions of the Audi Q3 and Volvo XC40, though similar to the BMW X2.

There are four trim levels called S, Dynamic SE, Dynamic HSE and Autobiography, with each costing around £6,000 more than the specification below it. That means top-spec models are approaching £60,000 – or just tipping over that amount in the case of the plug-in hybrid – making a fully loaded Evoque a lot pricier than similarly equipped alternatives.

Standard kit is pretty good if nothing special, including leather upholstery, LED headlights and 18-inch alloy wheels. Dynamic SE feels like the better value option, because you get 19-inch wheels, a fancy Meridian sound system and keyless entry. Autobiography models do come packed with kit to justify the price, with 21-inch alloy wheels, a panoramic sliding glass roof and Windsor leather seats.

More fun to drive on twisty roads than you’d expect and epic off road, but it’s bumpier around town

In town

The Evoque might be the smallest Range Rover you can buy, but it still gives you some of that traditional commanding Land Rover driving position, so you get a great view out over the bonnet, though the windscreen is quite narrow which can take a little time to adjust to. That does little to impact forward visibility though, and you can also see clearly around the sides of the car, which is useful in town.

You get nice big door mirrors, which are great when you’re parking, but less good is the fact that the rear screen is pretty small, so the view out of the back isn’t great.

The automatic gearbox is slow to respond when you need a quick burst of acceleration, such as when you’re pulling out of a busy junction, and you can be left floundering, waiting for the ‘box to make up its mind.

The seats are comfortable, but the Evoque does have a tendency to jiggle and jolt you around at low speeds. It deals with big things — speedbumps and the likes — quite nicely, but smaller bumps make it fidget quite a lot, so it’s not as effortlessly smooth as a Volvo XC40.

Plug-in hybrid models will be best if you spend most of your time driving around town as you can cruise along silently on the electric motor. The battery offers up to 39 miles of range, which is a little bit more than similar alternatives can manage.

On the motorway

That jittery suspension does smooth out quite a bit when you bring the Evoque up to motorway speed, where you glide along rather nicely. It’s also very quiet and refined as there’s very little road noise nor wind noise.

The Evoque’s diesel engines can be noisy though, especially — once again — when you need a quick burst of acceleration. That sluggish gearbox is easily flummoxed and can be caught hesitating about which gear to offer up, though all models are brisk enough once on the move.

The plug-in hybrid is considerably quieter, but you’ll quickly eat up the battery at motorway speeds so your fuel economy will worsen quickly.

Lane-keeping assistance and cruise control are included as standard, but again the Dynamic SE trim demonstrates its worth by coming with adaptive cruise control that will maintain distance to the car in front.

On a twisty road

The Evoque might be a tall(ish), heavy(ish) off-road-focused SUV, but it’s surprisingly good when it comes to bendy roads. There’s very little body lean, and while the steering isn’t the quickest to respond to your inputs, it does a decent job of feeding back how much grip the front tyres have. If you really want a posh SUV that’s fun in corners, stretching your budget to a Porsche Macan would do wonders.

What about roads that don’t have any tarmac at all? Clearly, a basic front-wheel drive Evoque is going to be challenged by anything more taxing than a bumpy field, but the four-wheel drive models are about as good in the rough stuff as you’d expect a junior Land Rover to be. The 600mm wading depth (that’s just over a foot-and-a-half) is especially useful if you live in an area prone to flooding, and you can even (optionally) spec it with water depth sensors in the wing mirrors so that you don’t dive into anything that the car can’t cope with. It’s no Defender when the going gets really tough, but it’s more capable than pretty much anyone will ever ask it to be.

It’s worth knowing that entry-level S models don’t get Terrain Response 2, which is useful if you regularly head off road. It lets you select different modes depending on the surface you’re driving on to help you avoid getting stuck.

Typical Land Rover practicality, and good rear seat space but the boot isn’t as big as it could be

You’d expect a Range Rover to be practical, and so it is. Up front, the Evoque gets huge door bins, and a good-sized storage bin under the front-seat armrest (which also gets two USB sockets and a 12-volt connection).

In front of that, there are two cupholders which are fine, but they come with a little lift-off cover that turns them into a storage tray. Unfortunately the tray doesn’t slide nor stow away neatly — your only option seems to be to chuck it in the glovebox, which is a bit daft. There is another handy storage area behind the heating and ventilation controls, although it’s easy to forget things that have been stashed there.

The driving position is pretty good, as you can sit fairly high to get a good view of your surroundings, and there’s loads of adjustment in the steering wheel and seat, which has electric operation on all trims. The narrow windscreen can take some adjusting to, because if you set your seat high for a commanding view you feel very close to the roof, but it doesn’t take long to get to grips with.

Space in the back seats

The Evoque’s rear doors open really wide, which is particularly useful if you have a child seat – but the door aperture is quite small which makes it a bit fiddly with larger seats. You get ISOFIX anchor points in the outer two rear seats, but they come with little pop-off plastic covers which are very easy to lose.

It’s acceptably spacious for those travelling in the back, with enough legroom and headroom (even with the optional glass roof) for tall passengers to get comfy enough, although there’s not much space under the front seats to stretch your feet out. The seats are also set quite low in the back, so taller passengers will find that their knees are in the air, which can be a (literal) pain on a longer journey.

The middle rear seat is just about useable, thanks to a relatively small transmission hump, but it is a bit perched-up, and three-across in the back is not massively comfortable. You also have to intrude on the foot space of those either side though, because it’s tricky to find space beneath the seats in front.

The rear door bins are decent, and you get nice LED reading lights and a coat hook mounted at the front of the rear door, so that a dangling coat isn’t in your face. There’s a 12-volt socket, but annoyingly no USB sockets in the back. It’s also annoying that the rear seats are fixed in place — no sliding and no reclining seatbacks. Boo. The Audi Q3 gets those on high-spec models.

Boot space

The boot of the Evoque isn’t the biggest, but at 591 litres it seems massive on paper. That’s because Land Rover quotes its official boot measurements as being loaded to the roof, whereas everybody else only quotes up to the luggage cover.

Taken in those terms, the Evoque’s boot is good but nothing special — and less special again if you go for the plug-in hybrid version, which has an official (Land Rover) measurement of 471 litres.

Comparison, for what it’s worth, indicates that the Audi Q3 is the best of the rest with 530 litres of luggage capacity in non-hybrid models, followed by 515 litres in the BMW X2 and just 452 litres in the Volvo XC40.

On non-plug-in hybrid versions there’s some handy under-floor storage, and a spare tyre is available as an option. You get some very solid tie-down points, and the boot itself is square, with no load-lip so it’s easy to get heavy items in and out. You also get a 12-volt socket and some little elastic straps for holding taller items upright, plus a netted area at the side of the boot and some pop-out hooks for bags. What’s annoying is that you can’t stash the luggage cover under the floor when you don’t need it, but it is flat so you can just put it at the bottom of the boot and load on top.

The back seats split-fold in three sections (40:20:40-style). They don’t fold 100 per cent flat, although you do get a continuous load floor so you can slide big items to the front. With the seats folded you get 1,383 litres of space, compared with 1,525 litres in the Q3.

Some nice bits of style and substance, but overall quality is mixed and the infotainment can’t match the best from the German brands

The cabin design in the Evoque is meant to be simple and uncluttered, giving off a sort of pared-back Scandi luxury hotel look, and it works for the most part. The thing is, that 2023 update went all in on the minimalist idea but fell short, so the centre console just looks a bit plain and, actually, a bit cheap. Where you used to get a crisp screen with slick, embedded dials for the climate controls, now there’s just an expanse of plastic with a gear selector looking lost in the middle.

For the most part, the choice of materials used is good, with lots of nice soft-touch surfaces, but you don’t have to look too hard to find some cheap bits.

Thankfully, there are some very good bits too, including glossy chrome trim around the big infotainment screen and on the doors. The narrow old display has been ditched in favour of a big 11.4-inch screen that sits proud of the dashboard like a big tablet.

It’s about as quick as a tablet too, responding swiftly to touches, and you get Land Rover’s smart and sophisticated graphics. It’s a shame, then, that it’s not the most intuitive system to find your way around.

You also have to put up with the climate settings being on the screen. The temperature is always visible and you can choose between sliding or tapping to change the values. But it’s not as easy to use as similar systems, such as those in an Audi, and changing things like the seat heating is more of a faff than the press-and-spin dials of old.

It’s a similar story for the drive modes. Instead of being easily accessible on the lower screen, you now have to press a button to bring up the menu on the middle screen. This also makes switching between the different energy use modes in the plug-in hybrid awkward.

A digital driver’s display is included on all models and it’s big, crisp, and displays all the information you need. It’s not as impressive as the Virtual Cockpit you get in an Audi, and it’s tricky to find your way between screens and settings, but it does a good enough job.

All models do get standard-fit Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, so it’s easy to set up your phone in the car, and there’s wireless phone charging included on every trim.

There’s a good variety of engines available for the Range Rover Evoque, with three diesel options, two petrol and a petrol-electric plug-in hybrid.

The latter will appeal to company car buyers because it has a low benefit-in-kind tax rate. This 309hp model is more expensive than the other engines though, so private buyers will have to consider whether the lower running costs offset that, including the lower first-year car tax rate. Be aware that if you can’t regularly top up the batteries, you will probably see worse economy than in the non-hybrid petrol engines.

Speaking of which, there are two petrol engines available. The P200 is offered on all but top-spec Autobiography models and has 200hp with fuel economy of 32.6mpg in official tests. From Dynamic SE and above, you can also choose a P250 with a more enticing 249hp but worse fuel economy at 30.9mpg.

The Evoque range opens with the D165 diesel, which has 163hp, front-wheel drive and a manual transmission. It’s usefully economical at 46.7mpg, but is the least appealing of the bunch to drive and is only available with the S trim.

There is a version of this engine that has four-wheel drive, an automatic gearbox and mild hybrid technology like every other engine in the range. The D200 has 204hp and gets 44mpg.

The Evoque is very safe indeed — Euro NCAP crash-tested it in 2019, and it scored the maximum five-stars for safety, including a 94% rating for adult occupant protection, and 87 per cent for child occupant protection. Both are very good scores, but it is worth noting that tests have become a bit stricter since then.

Standard safety kit includes a rear-view camera, front and rear parking sensors and traffic sign recognition. Step up to Dynamic SE and you get blind spot assistance, rear collision monitor and rear traffic warning. Top-spec models get a 360-degree camera and head-up display.

Land Rover’s reputation for reliability and build quality really couldn’t be much worse, and it tends to finish well down the lists of most reliability surveys. There will always be question marks about how interiors hold up over time, and while the diesel engines have been around for a while now and are generally quite solid, concerns about faulty electrics, unresponsive touchscreens and fragile gearboxes are well placed.

The Evoque has had plenty of recalls over the years, for everything from seat belt issues to issues with fuel hoses. Make sure any work has been carried out on used models before buying, but if not, Land Rover will sort them for free.

Land Rover has promised to improve its quality and reliability issues, and the Evoque does come with a three-year, unlimited-mileage warranty, which for an extra cost can be extended out to 10 years (though this does max out at 100,000 miles if that comes first). The warranty also covers you for a hire car to get to your destination if you have a breakdown. The standard offering is similar to what the likes of Audi and BMW offer, but consider a Lexus if you want long-term peace of mind from your posh SUV – these models get up to 10 years of cover with annual servicing.